Re: [O] org-map-entries but with arguments?

[Matt Price]

On Wed., Sep. 18, 2019, 9:42 p.m. John Kitchin, <address@hidden> wrote:

You can get an alist of all the properties in an entry with org-entry-properties, and then you can let-alist these, or do something else. Here is an example that might be related.

* test
  :PROPERTIES:
  :some-random-property: True
  :END:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results code
(org-entry-properties)
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
#+begin_src emacs-lisp
(("CATEGORY" . "2019-09-18 21:33")
 ("SOME-RANDOM-PROPERTY" . "True")
 ("BLOCKED" . "")
 ("FILE" . "/Users/jkitchin/Box Sync/kitchingroup/jkitchin/journal/2019/09/18 21:33/2019-09-18 21:33.org")
 ("PRIORITY" . "B")
 ("ITEM" . "test"))
#+end_src

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(let-alist (cl-loop for (key . value) in (org-entry-properties)
   collect (cons (intern key) value))
 .SOME-RANDOM-PROPERTY)
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
: True

John

Jeez, thanks John. For some reason when I first tried org-entry-properties I thought it was only reporting back the standard properties, like ITEM.  And in any case I had forgotten how to convert strings to symbols. This is enormously helpful. 

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin 
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803

@johnkitchin
http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 9:11 PM Matt Price <address@hidden> wrote:

Sorry, replied to Adam directly by accident.

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 8:32 PM Matt Price <address@hidden> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 5:31 PM Adam Porter <address@hidden> wrote:

Matt Price <address@hidden> writes:

> Is there a lisp trick for adding arguments to the function called by
> `org-map-entries`?
>
> I have the following function:
>
> (cl-defun org-lms-return-all-assignments (&optional (send-all nil) (also-mail nil) (post-to-lms t) )
>   "By default mail all subtrees 'READY' to student recipients, unless SEND-ALL is non-nil.
> In that case, send all marked 'READY' or 'TODO'."
>   (interactive)
>   (message "Mailing all READY subtrees to students")
>   (let ((send-condition
>          (if send-all
>              `(or (string= (org-element-property :todo-keyword item) "READY")
>                   (string= (org-element-property :todo-keyword item) "TODO") )
>            `(string= (org-element-property :todo-keyword item) "READY")
>            )))
>     (org-map-entries
>      #'ol-send-just-one))
>   (org-cycle-hide-drawers 'all))
>
> I'd like to relay some of hte functions arguments to the one called
> internally to do the work.  ~(ol-send-just-one~ takes an ~also-mail~
> and a ~post-to-lms~ parameter,just like
> ~org-lms-return-all-assignments~, but I'm not sure how to trick
> org-map-entries into passing those arguments on. Any hints?  Thank
> you!

Hi Matt,

If I may, I think org-ql can help you here.  It should also work much
faster than org-map-entries, because it can skip to entries with the
desired to-do keywords (although you could also use the MATCH argument
to org-map-entries to improve its speed).  Try this function (untested):

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp
(cl-defun org-lms-return-all-assignments-ql (&optional (send-all nil) (also-mail nil) (post-to-lms t))
  "By default mail all subtrees 'READY' to student recipients, unless SEND-ALL is non-nil.
In that case, send all marked 'READY' or 'TODO'."
  (interactive)
  (message "Mailing all READY subtrees to students")
  (let ((todo-keywords (if send-all
                           '("READY" "TODO")
                         '("READY"))))
    (org-ql-select (current-buffer)
      `(todo ,@todo-keywords)
      :action `(ol-send-just-one ,also-mail ,post-to-lms))))
#+END_SRC

OK, this is pretty cool, thank you.  I took John's excellent suggestion of using a headline property to store the appropriate actions, but it makes sense to switch to org-ql if I can master the syntax (which seems awfully powerful).  One questions: does org-ql-select respect buffer narrowing? That would be important for me.

Man, hard to hold all this stuff in my head.  ANd very hard to navigate my own code now that I see how ugly it is. 

Another question.  In place of a function or sexp,  the :action key accepts the keyword "element" as a value, and will return a parsed headline. Is it possible to then pass that value on to a function that will be evaluated? I'm asking because I have a bunch of functions with very long `let` sections in which information is extracted from a headline with (org-entry-get). It would be nice to use John's plist trick (from the other thread we're on) to, essentially, let-plist all the properties of the headline. It would declutter my code significantly.